“I can stop talking about teaching whenever I want to,” claims educator-writer Emmet Rosenfeld, who spends much of his timeyou guessed itthinking and talking about teaching. A former English teacher at the renowned Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., Rosenfeld has recently transitioned to a position as English teacher and Dean of Students at the Congressional Schools of Virginia in Falls Church, Va. Until he comes to terms with his Education Problem, enjoy this wide-ranging opinion blog on teaching and learning in his classroom and beyond.

Making the Grade

Last week, Fairfax County changed its grading policy to adopt a “ten point” scale. In other words, instead of needing a 94 for an A and a 64 to pass, under the new system 90 or better bags an A and a 60 gets you over the hump.

The school board finally deserted its flimsy rationale that it was “setting a high bar” in the face of pressure from sharp-elbowed parents concerned that their children were somehow disadvantaged in the college admissions process, especially compared to applicants from neighboring school districts like Arlington and Montgomery that use metric scales. (At my current school, the grading scale is even tighter than the one Fairfax is deserting: a 94 only gets you a B+. It’s a non-kerfluffle for us because we record and report our grades, both on report cards and transcripts, as numerical averages only.)

The irony with the sound and fury is that, in the end, it doesn’t signify much. The notion that holding the line on a high A versus a low one means watering down standards implies that there is a single, objective standard applied in all cases when distilling student achievement into a letter grade. That’s bosh.

Standardized tests, with all their flaws, can at least claim to be more objective than grades. Grades are whatever teachers say they are, with virtually no checks or balances other than a rather generic and distant scrutiny from the administration and—here’s the saving grace-- each teacher’s own professional integrity.

Don’t get me wrong. Grades mean something. With good teachers, they are blisteringly accurate representations of achievement in a particular class. But exactly what they mean is not uniform: not from classroom to classroom within one school, and certainly not across buildings or districts. There will always be the legendary tough grader and the push-over, and every flavor in between. Grades are individual recipes concocted by each teacher from ingredients they value. Some teachers prize performance on tests and quizzes; others on papers; some care most about a student’s ability to synthesize material and respond with an original thought.

A dispassionate study of how letter grades are really used would reveal that they are many things: not just a measure of achievement, but also reward, feedback, motivator. In short, both carrot and stick. The one thing they inarguably are not is objective. Even the most intractable accountants, after all, make what are ultimately subjective choices: how many total points for the report and how many for the quiz? How heavily weighted is the homework versus the test?

No discussion of grades is ever dispassionate, of course, hence the recent parent push for a kinder, gentler A in Fairfax. Only time will tell if the goal-- to improve kids’ chances to get into colleges-- will be achieved. I suspect colleges are savvy enough to take the new information in stride, and will probably continue to let in about the same (still pretty high) numbers of FCPS kids as they have in the past. Their prerogatives for diversity, geographic and otherwise, will require this recalibration.

On the other side, will the change result in rampant grade inflation, the watering down of courses, and, by extension, the end of the free world? I’m agnostic here, too. Teachers will continue to govern their classroom economies, jiggering the point values so as to dole out A’s with enough scarcity to keep students honest.

Beyond the new math, getting an A means what it’s always meant: you are among the best. One more immutable truth? Making the grade means just as much to teachers as it does to students and their parents.

4 Comments

We're from California. We don't use letter grades at all in most schools in our district. We might damage the self-esteem of our children by not identifying all effort as, at the very least good, but if the effort was outstanding, even if one-third of the answers were wrong, it's outstanding work.

Emmet...Your point is well taken. I would add that grades are not testimony of learning. For some reason, I'm thinking about Father Guido Sarducci's Five-Minute University. My sons attended a school with high standards for grades (a 94 earned an A-) while I taught in a school with "lower" standards (a 90 earned an A-). Regardless, an A was an A.
As educators who take pride in our profession, we have deluded ourselves to believing that grades are the indicators of learning, which they are not. I nearly forgot that grades are also our way of sorting kids--like the labels on beef, looking for Choice. Okay, so what's the alternative? A national standard for converting percentage grades to letter grades? The elimination of letter grades? Replacing grades with "atta-boys"?
Thanks for the dialogue

Cut off scores for grades really misses the point. WHAT is assessed and HOW it is assessed is the bigger point. Is the grade a measure of learning or behavior?
In some classrooms a student might receive a C because they don't do the homework (practice) even though they get A's on the tests. A 10 page research paper turned in two days late might be a 75% instead of a 95% had it been turned in "on-time."
If I give an exceptionally hard test an 88% might deserve an A while if the test is easy at 94% may be nothing special.
Until we define what a grade means they really won't mean much.